Wednesday, 12 September 2012

How Do Travel Consumers Really Want to Engage With Your Brand via Mobile?

By Gina Baillie

Did you know that French
travel consumers are 15% more likely to book via a tablet than American
consumers? Or that Americans are nearly
4 times more likely to book a hotel over a smartphone than the Dutch?

No, nor did I. When
examining how to develop a mobile strategy we tend to bundle customers into
‘Europe’ and ‘North America’ when in actual fact there are vast differences between
and within these continents.

Most travel brands base their research and investment
decisions on mobile penetration levels and broad sweeping mobile trends without
actually having an in-depth understanding of what their customer wants.

I’ve just finished reading EyeforTravel’s new Travel
Consumer Report 2012-13 in which 8,400 online travel consumers from 5 different
countries were quizzed on their recent travel purchases and attitudes towards
web, mobile, social media and travel brands.

The statistics which particularly stood out for me were the ones
regarding mobile and tablet usage and attitudes.

We all know that more and more customers are using mobile to
access travel websites and information but we often lack information or skip
over what the customer actually wants to do whilst they are on your mobile site
or once they have downloaded your app.

The report found that a whopping 50% of Dutch respondents
would not use a smartphone to book travel compared with 40% of Brits and
French, 35% of Americans, and 29% of Germans.
So what do they want to do?

For the Dutch using as a ticket/boarding pass was a very
preferable use of a smartphone for travel, as was having a map function. For the Brits, Americans and Germans, map
functions, access to information on local activities and using as a
ticket/boarding pass were the most popular reasons to use a smartphone whereas
in France, using smartphones to access hotel and restaurant reviews along with
the map and check in functions were most popular.

What are consumers not so willing to do on a
smartphone? Researching travel products via
smartphones was the least popular travel related use of a smartphone for all
countries surveyed along with actually making a travel purchase via a mobile device.

But what about the 65% of US and 71% of German customers who
did say that they were willing to purchase via mobile? Well, the willingness to purchase via a mobile
is clearly still there and shouldn’t be ignored as it is likely to increase.

In terms of the travel products which consumers wished to
buy via mobile, there was a roughly equal spread between countries but for
Americans, booking a cruise was the least popular product to purchase via a
smartphone. This varied significantly when
using tablets whereby the vacation package was the favourite travel product to
purchase via a tablet in all 5 countries surveyed.

The two most popular price points for purchasing travel
products via a smartphone in the US were products with a value of $201 - $500
(16% of respondents) and perhaps surprisingly products of any monetary value
(17%). This same pattern was mimicked in Germany.

So what can we learn from this? If you are planning your mobile strategy you
should consider:-

The geographical location of your customer and
the dominant mobile behaviours and attitudes of consumers in that country.For example, given that the Dutch are the
most reluctant to book via a smartphone you might want to give Dutch customers
a number to call rather than spending huge amounts on complex booking systems

Your product type and value

The specific features of your mobile website/app
-consider that in most countries map
functions, access to information on local activities as well as check in and
boarding functions were key winners

Don’t bundle mobile and tablet strategies as one
and the same – they require very different approaches

Lastly, the income and age bracket of your
consumer (I’ve not had a chance to touch on this yet but stayed tuned for
future posts!)

The report is packed full of key consumer stats and attitudes
from the entire consumer path to purchase (and yes, I know, I’m biased but it
really is very extensive!). If you are interested in downloading the
report brochure and infographics then these can be found here.

We’ll be sharing a lot more insights from the report over
the coming weeks via this blog and EyeforTravel.com. Stay tuned by signing up to EyeforTravel’s
weekly newsletter on the EyeforTravel
homepage.

Official EyeforTravel Blog

EyeforTravel is a media company specialising in business intelligence for the travel and tourism industry. Our news website is one of the top three most visited travel trade websites globally.

We aim to present the latest news & insights on what is going on in the exciting world of travel and tourism. You will see different posts from some of the EyeforTravel team; Tim Gunstone (Founder), Shreya Ganapathy (Global Conference Director), Alex Hadwick (Head of Research), Leo Langford (Global Conference Producer) and Renu Kannu (Project Director).